Interdisciplinary Practice in Policy, Research, and Economic Justice
For this assignment, select one of the scenarios below. Your task is to assemble an interdisciplinary therapeutic team to deliver services in your chosen scenario.
Develop an essay to reflect the therapeutic team you have assembled.
Determine who the team members are, why you have selected that profession for inclusion as part of the team, the evidence-based interventions you will use, and the individual roles of each team member as well as how the team will work together .
Select three primary goals for the team to address with the client system.
Be sure you clearly operationalize the role and responsibility of each team member, as well as explain the intervention or strategy each might use to accomplish the goals.
Finally, describe how you will evaluate the team’s effectiveness in accomplishing the goals you set forth.
Scenario 2:
Wagner Elementary School is a public K-5 institution, located in Miller County in the Southeastern U.S. The county is largely rural, with Wagner serving children in the only urban area of Miller County- the county seat. Miller County has high rates of crime, poverty, homelessness, lower socioeconomic status, lower education, and poorer health outcomes of residents as opposed to nearby counties. Wagner Elementary is located in an area of the county where many of these social and economic burdens are highly concentrated. The school is situated in one of the “roughest” neighborhoods, adjacent to a large cluster of sub-standard housing projects. Residents of the housing projects face deplorable living conditions; gang and gun violence and other crimes are common occurrences. Wagner serves approximately 400 students, 25 percent of whom all live in the adjacent housing projects. Many of Wagner’s students face untreated mental health and behavioral issues, learning complications, and physical health challenges such as severe asthma and allergies due to the living conditions in the housing projects. Many students face hunger daily as their families’ experience chronic food insecurity, as well as unsafe environments, including a dangerous walk to and from school. These complications greatly impede students’ ability to learn. Also, violence in the housing project has become so severe it is an additional learning impediment. For example, most of the 125 students who attend Wagner and live in the complex were exposed to a recent gang-related shooting at the complex which resulted in several deaths and multiple injuries. Consequently, many students missed school or were unable to concentrate at school for many weeks after the event.
Support your presentation with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources may be included.
Background Info.
As you continue to learn throughout your MSW studies, IC in social work is inherent . Some early critics of social work, however, argued that the interdisciplinary nature of social work resulted in a lack of a professional identity. For example, in 1915, Abraham Flexner questioned the legitimacy of the social work profession . One hundred years later, some argue that social workers still struggles to maintain a professional identity . However, many social work educators, researchers, scholars, and practitioners maintain that social work has significantly evolved since Flexner’s 1915 speech. Advances in evidence-based practice, technology, licensing, education, and research have led social work to have firmly established its reputability as a profession .
Consequently, social work practitioners must have a solid, interdisciplinary policy, research, and evidence base with which to draw effective interventions. Also, given your core foundation of advocating for diverse, marginalized, and oppressed populations, well-trained social work researchers must have a seat at the table on an IC researching with and for these populations. Social work researchers must be nationally recognized as important collaborators .
Be sure to review this week’s resources carefully. You are expected to apply the information from these resources when you prepare your assignments.
References
Flexner, A. (1915). Is social work a profession? General Education Board, New York City.
Gelman, C. R., & González, M. J. (2016). Reconsidering social work 100 years post-Flexner: Where are we now, where are we headed, what has been gained, what has been lost? Journal of Social Work Education, 52(sup1), S1–S5.
Gitterman, A. (2014). Social work: A profession in search of its identity. Journal of Social Work Education, 50(4), 599–607.
Moore, M., Martinson, M. L., Nurius, P. S., & Kemp, S. P. (2018). Transdisciplinarity in research: Perspectives of early career faculty. Research on Social Work Practice, 28(3), 254–264.
Nurius, P. S., Kemp, S. P., Köngeter, S., & Gehlert, S. (2017). Next generation social work research education: Fostering transdisciplinary readiness. European Journal of Social Work, 20(6), 907–920.
